Another backup software question

[davidedric]

Lightroom Version Number

Lightroom Classic 10.1

Operating System

1. Windows 10

Hi,

I've been running CrashPlan for several years now. I kept going when they ended the personal computer service, and kept promising myself I'd review it, but I never have

Would there be any advantage in moving over to BackBlaze, as mentioned in a recent thread? Are the capabilities similar? I've decent upload speed of 30mbs, so the initial load although lengthy isn't too frightening.

Any reason why I couldn't run them in parallel during the initial laod?

Thanks

 

[Paul McFarlane]

We made exactly that change, both used to use CrashPlan.

I ran both for a while, it takes time to upload (I had around 4Tb) so it gave me peace of mind that my backups were definitely somewhere and intact during the switch!

 

[AlanF]

Hi,

I've been running CrashPlan for several years now. I kept going when they ended the personal computer service, and kept promising myself I'd review it, but I never have

Would there be any advantage in moving over to BackBlaze, as mentioned in a recent thread? Are the capabilities similar? I've decent upload speed of 30mbs, so the initial load although lengthy isn't too frightening.

Any reason why I couldn't run them in parallel during the initial laod?

Thanks

I cannot answer the first two questions. For the third question there could be a problem with both programs changing the File System file change records that they may be using to determine whether or not a change has been made. Also, you might get a lot of conflicting drive access requests slowing things down if they are running at the same time.

Prior to the transition you could just as well use the operating system to copy everything to a new external drive. You can make subsequent copies based on comparison of files rather than relying on the File System to indicate that a file has been changed.

To make sure copies are valid, first use the ExactFile program (free) to create checksums for all files and folders. Apply it manually to as many folders as required to balance how long it takes to create or check each checksums digest against how many times you have to run the program.
The second step is to copy all of the folders to the backup drive without any integrity checks (because they take too long). You could use Windows for this but I prefer Total Commander (available free to use) because it can be set to not change the file dates and times on the destination drive.
The third step is to run each ExactFile digest file on the external drive to have it verify the files against the stored checksums. ExactFile can use up to 16 CPU threads simultaneously but it may the thrash the HDD severely if you tried that (works great with SSDs).

You could use only Total Commander and have it do the file verifications during or after the copying. After is better because it doesn't mess with the drive caching (the destination drive will not be switching from write to read after every file). To do this, use the folder comparison tool and allow subfolders. TC does not have the same efficient multithreaded capability as ExactFile but that will not matter so much if you are using HDDs.

You'll be lucky to average 100MB/s to or from an individual HDD. It will be faster on average if you use a significantly bigger HDD (6TB or 8TB for 4TB of data) but it will still take a long time.

Apart from anything else this will give you a snapshot backup that is fully independent of any backup utilities. You can put it in a safe.

No matter which program you use, if it relies on a database then be sure to backup that database often. This is separate from using the program to backup the picture files. Also backup the database backup definition file(s).

Personally, I won't use cloud storage. Where I am, the data costs are far too high and transfer speeds far too slow, too often. And if there is a military or social or financial conflict then I may find myself isolated from my backup for some time, or at least struggling to access it fast enough for long enough.

 

[camner]

I ran both CrashPlan and Backblaze in parallel while I waited for BackBlaze to finish uploading all my stuff. I have a very asymmetric internet connection (50Mbps down, 5 up), so the upload took a LONG time. I had no problems that I was aware of.

I won’t claim to be an expert, but I don’t think the cloud backup apps actually make a change to the files being backed up (such as setting some flag that the file has already been backed up).

As far as advantages/disadvantages are concerned, each service has its pros and cons. BB has a shorter retention period (30 days) for deleted/changed files, though one can pay extra to get a longer retention period. I find BB customer support better (though I haven’t been with CP for 2 years, so it may have changed). BB excludes some file types by default, and that can lead to some misleading situations. For example, it won’t upload .vmx files. But .vmx files are contained in a VMWare Fusion virtual machine package (on a Mac), and the outer package file WAS in the backup store, so I assumed BB was backing up the whole VM. When I was perusing the backup store, I accidentally discovered this, which I confirmed with BB customer support. My issue with this isn’t that BB won’t backup virtual machines (most backup services won’t), but that it APPEARS that it is backed up, but it really isn’t. (If you want a workaround, just create a .zip file of the whole .VMware package file, and that fools BB into backing it up.)

All in all, I am as happy with BackBlaze as I was with CP

 

[davidedric]

I'm now running both in parallel. It's taken Backblaze around five days to shift around 600GB of the 1TB I'm starting with. It hasn't reported any problems so far. I did a mini recovery test just downloaded a couple of files.